In the natural gas industry and, more particularly, in the field of residential natural gas service, earthquake safety is an area of major concern. The industry is faced with issues relating both to preventing damage arising directly out of seismic events and preventing damage and reducing service workload arising out of customers' responses to seismic events.
During an earthquake, vibrations are transmitted through the structure of a building to appliances and other items which are situated within the building. For a variety of reasons, an appliance which is situated adjacent a wall will often tend to "walk" away from the wall during an earthquake. In some cases, the appliance will even fall over.
After an earthquake, if there is a damaged appliance, the homeowner or building resident will typically shutoff the main service to the home or building. This terminates gas flow to all of the appliances in the home, even ones which were not affected by the quake. To return service, a utility technician must relight all the pilot lights of these various appliances.
It is, therefore, desirable to provide a valve which is adaptable to be used in association with an individual gas-powered appliance for interrupting gas flow to that specific appliance if the appliance is disturbed during an earthquake, while not affecting the operation of other appliances in a building.